Hot Button: Is price too high for red-light cameras?

By STEVE HANSEN, SEATTLE MAGAZINE

Updated 2:15 pm, Monday, April 25, 2011

You could help put Seattle in the black if a camera catches you running a red. But is the price for safer streets too high? Photo SensitiveWhen Mike McKim made a right turn on red at the corner of NW Market Street and 15th Avenue NW in Ballard last December, there was absolutely nothing remarkable about it. No oncoming traffic. No one in the crosswalk. Just “city driving,” as he calls it.

But the video taken by the intersection’s traffic-light camera told another story, revealing that McKim failed to come to a complete stop before turning right on red. His infraction—one of 4,199 violations captured last December by Seattle’s 30 traffic-light cameras—cost him $124.

Since 2005, 20 jurisdictions across Washington have deployed red-light and speed cameras to improve traffic safety, applying the hammer of $100-plus fines to make their point. After initiating a six-camera pilot program in 2006, Seattle installed 24 more cameras between 2008 and this year. Want to push yellow? Want to roll through a right turn on red? It’ll cost you.

Despite their increasing use, these cameras continue to raise a lot of questions. First and foremost: Do they make traffic safer?

Traffic-safety officials believe the cameras certainly reduce the number of vehicles that speed through red lights. They probably don’t reduce the number of accidents, but they may lessen the severity by trading nasty right-angle collisions for comparatively less dangerous rear-enders (from motorists being struck from behind after slamming on their brakes so as not to trigger the cameras).

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One thing not in question about red-light cameras: They make a lot of money. This is true for the jurisdiction that permits them, as well as for the company that owns, installs and operates them. In the case of Seattle, that’s American Traffic Solutions of Scottsdale, Arizona.

Seattle Police Department spokesman Sean Whitcomb says ATS charges Seattle $3,500 a month for each camera monitoring as many as two lanes, and $3,750 per month for each camera covering three lanes or more. That’s more than $1.2 million a year going to ATS from Seattle alone. Whitcomb says ATS can charge an additional $5 for every infraction after the first 800 caught at each camera. He says that proviso has never been activated and uses it as evidence that SPD’s contract with ATS does not contain an incentive to ticket more motorists to raise revenue.

Still, take those 4,199 notices of infraction (NOIs)—they are not “tickets” per se—issued last December at $124 a pop. The city’s experience is that about 75 percent are paid, which comes to $390,507 for one month. Multiply that by 12 months and that’s real money (nearly $4.7 million before the city’s payment to ATS).

Math like that engenders the almost universal claim that red-light cameras are simply revenue-generating machines. Bonney Lake city administrator Don Morrison wouldn’t disagree. He says they made a lot of money for his community between 2006 and 2008—and also made the streets safer. The small Pierce County municipality used cameras in school zones and found they had a significant effect in reducing speeds. But the city had problems with its vendor, a company that eventually was acquired by ATS, and after too many complaints from citizens, the City Council pulled the plug. Nevertheless, Morrison has no problem with the technology. “It worked marvelously,” he says, “and, to be honest, it was a revenue maker. We exceeded operating costs by about 50 percent.”

So why is it that Seattle and other cities are free to rake in the dough via such a high-priced fine? It would appear they are exposing a loophole left open by the 2005 state Legislature when it allowed for installation of traffic-light cameras: Legislators decided the fine should be in line with what it might cost for a parking ticket, but they didn’t say what kind of parking ticket.

Of the 20 cities in the state that employ red-light cameras, all have chosen to issue fines that are at the high end of the parking-ticket spectrum. Seattle started at $101, then raised it to $124 in 2007 to be consistent with what it would cost a motorist being ticketed by a uniformed officer for running a red light.Several Seattle attorneys have challenged this as overreaching. A class-action suit filed last June in federal court contends that—among other things—the various jurisdictions have collected fines that are excessive. Attorney David Breskin of Breskin Johnson and Townsend, who speaks for the attorneys involved in the suit, says the legislative intent back in 2005 was to have such NOIs cost “about $20”— the average cost of a parking ticket at the time. (Currently, of the 109 types of parking infractions in Seattle, all but 10 carry fines of either $39 or $42; parking in a handicapped space is the priciest offense, at $250.)In March, however, U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour dismissed the claims, saying cities could set the fees as long as they are in the range of what a jurisdiction might fine a motorist for a parking violation.

The plaintiffs have appealed Coughenour’s ruling. “The court’s purpose is to be faithful to the intent of the Legislature,” Breskin says. “There was no consideration at all for what the Legislature intended.”Just as the lawsuit seeks to limit how much jurisdictions can collect, so too did a House bill introduced in the state Legislature last session. Championed by Christopher Hurst, D-Enumclaw, the bill sought to reduce to $25 the fine for each caught-on-camera infraction. House Bill 2780 died in committee in February, but it gained enough notoriety around the state that it’s likely to return in the next legislative session.

If a renewed bill were successful, some worry that $25 will be considered worth it to get to a meeting on time. “If you set the fine too low, are you really going to be changing the people’s behavior?” asked Seattle City Council member Nick Licata on KUOW’s The Conversation last February. “If the [$124] fine is at that turning point where it gets someone’s attention so that they don’t want to pay the fine, then that’s the right price.”

It’s probably the right price for another reason: If a city charges only $25 per infraction, can it cover the more than $3,500-per-month fee for each camera? Consider the December 2009 number—4,199 NOIs issued by Seattle cameras—and multiply it by $25. You get almost exactly the monthly fee Seattle pays ATS, about $105,000.

“Those things are not cheap,” Bonney Lake’s Morrison attests. “For us, they took about $25 to $40 [per NOI] to run it. When I heard about [the legislation in Olympia], it seemed to me like a backdoor way to kill it.”

It may be a death by double-edged sword. Not only would reduced fines make it difficult for jurisdictions to recoup costs, it most likely wouldn’t deter motorists from driving dangerously, either. After all, even McKim—who paid the $124 ticket—doesn’t think his experience with the red-light camera has made him a safer driver. “The answer is ‘no’—I’m not trying to drive more safely,” he says with a laugh. “I’m just trying not to get a ticket!”